A Hiss-tory of Magic: A Wonder Cats Mystery Book 1 (11 page)

When the movement of the waves made the yacht lurch, Reuben missed his next shot by a hair, and the bullet only grazed Blake.

Meanwhile, I’d reached the smaller boat, still lashed to the yacht. I kicked and jumped, reaching for the side of the wooden boat with one hand, still hanging onto Min with the other. I caught the boat’s side and it tipped, filling with glowing magic water. I pushed the edge beneath me and, choking, hauled Min into the boat with me.

I rolled Min onto his back, as flat as I could manage inside the boat, and pushed down on his chest as hard as I could for a moment then released it. Again. I imitated his heartbeat.

“Min, you are not going this way!” I shouted at him. “Not because of me or my family secrets! And definitely not because of Reuben Connors!”

I leaned over Min’s face, pinched his nose, covered his mouth with mine, and breathed into his lungs.

I drew a fist back and punched Min in the chest.

The lake went dark.

Min coughed and sputtered, then turned aside and vomited water. He pushed against the bottom of the boat with the heel of one hand and sat up, almost panting with panic. “Cath!” he gasped. “You saved me!”

I was so happy he was still alive that I kissed him.

“Stay here,” I told Min, climbing up the yacht’s ladder again as the waves calmed down. “I’ve got to take care of Reuben and Blake.”

Blake shut the handcuffs with a snap. Reuben was now cuffed to the yacht railing.

“Blake!” I shouted, seeing the deck drenched with blood. The moonlight made the red fluid look black.

“You have the right to an attorney…” Blake persisted faintly. I shoved him a safe distance away from Reuben.

“Blake, you’re bleeding really badly.”

Blake stumbled, almost fainting. I put both my hands over his wound, trying to staunch the bleeding. “Hang on! Hang on, please! Stay with me. Jake and Talbot and everybody—they’re on their way.” They couldn’t have missed that giant magical pillar of light, and they’d be curious about it.

“My heart’s in your hands,” Blake said faintly. “There are worse ways to die.”

“You are not going to die,” I told him. I knew it was a bad sign that Blake was getting so maudlin, though. “We saved the town. We saved Min! You don’t do something like that and then just die. You just have to stay with me, all right? Blake?” He was looking at me, but his eyes seemed to glaze over. I called out to him again, “Blake!”

Reuben laughed, still struggling against the handcuffs and spewing threats that made no sense. My hands kept the pressure on Blake’s wound until the police boats came.

J
ake drove me home
. I had some leftover pancakes for dinner, chewing ravenously as I called Bea to tell her the Order’s devious plans had been thwarted. After that, I took a hot shower, slept without dreaming, and woke without Treacle.

With the Brew-Ha-Ha still closed, I didn’t know what I would do. Still, I didn’t feel like curling up in bed and replaying the horrors of the past three days in my mind. I also felt as though I was coming down with another case of magic burnout. It wasn’t as awful as I’d anticipated after doing a spell as huge as Waking the Waterfall, but Min had given his life force—if only temporarily—and therefore did most of the magical heavy lifting.

Blake had said the ritual with me. I hoped the spell hadn’t taken too much out of him, either. He would need his life force to, well, live.

I didn’t know who to call first, so I decided I’d go to the animal shelter, make a donation, and thank some of the strays personally for all their help the night before. Maybe that would bring me back down to earth and clear my head.

The old man who ran the animal shelter, Murray Willis, turned out to be related to young Cody, from the insurance office. I found that out when I arrived to see a whole crew of news reporters filming an interview with Cody for a TV spot.

Old Murray was beaming with pride. As we doled out kibble into serving dishes, he chatted about how Cody had been studying bioluminescent flora and fauna in the Wonder Falls lake. “Glowing animals,” Murray said, “too tiny to see just one. You can’t even pet ’em! I never understood it.”

I stroked a long-haired calico cat with a missing eye, and I said that understanding Cody’s fascination was beyond me, as well.

“I would have wanted to be where you were last night, though.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. “Seriously, Mr. Willis?”

“Without the life-threatening hostage taking, o’ course,” Murray corrected himself. “But that bioluminescent pond weed made the falls glow brighter than a lightning storm. Think about that!”

“Oh, yeah,” I said. “Nature’s wonderful. Too bad people try to get in the way, right?”

“Folk like us and Cody just do our best,” Murray replied. “And Samberg—is he out of the hospital yet?”

“I don’t know. You know Blake? Detective Samberg?”

Murray nodded. “He’s my most enthusiastic volunteer here at the animal shelter. It would be a pity if we lost him, and he hasn’t even been a month in this town!”

The animal shelter didn’t have a lot of volunteers. I decided to drop by more often, not just when I had to pick Treacle up again for wandering away.

At that moment, Bea called me on my cell. “Have brunch with us!” Bea said. “We’re at the Parks’ place.”

“Still?”

“Of course we are. Mrs. Park wouldn’t let us go off at—what, two or three in the morning? And with Mom just out of the hospital! Besides, Min’s here, and”—Bea lowered her voice—“he’s really eager to see you again.”

I smiled. “That wasn’t some overwhelming trauma, then?”

“You’re his hero! He doesn’t mind the broken ribs. Mrs. Park and Mom have been catching up.”

At that, I gasped. “Aunt Astrid’s alive! I mean, awake! Awake and talking!”

“Go,” old Murray told me.

I hung up the phone. “Thanks, Mr. Willis!”

“Thank you!”

I ran out past Cody and the news crew and uphill to the Parks’ home. The townsfolk had found a cover story for the giant magical display of the night before, and they found it all by themselves. Aunt Astrid had come back to us. The sun was shining. Things were looking up.

When I saw smoke rising from somewhere near the Parks’ front porch, I had a moment of panic, I admit, what with this town having had two suspicious fires in three days.

I only saw Mr. Park at the barbecue, though, which was surprising. He nodded a greeting and waved with the hand that wasn’t flipping a burger with a spatula. I waved a greeting as I jogged toward him, noting the rest of the group gathered at a giant wicker porch table. Treacle was sharpening his claws on one of the table legs.

I was focused on stopping him, which was why I didn’t see Min break away and come toward me. I jogged right into his cracked ribs.

“Oww!”

“Min! I’m so sorry!”

Min laughed and hugged me. “Worth it!”

We eventually broke apart, but we still couldn’t quit grinning at each other. I craned my neck to look at the table. “What a crowd!”

Mrs. Park set down a tray of lemonade and beckoned me over as Bea followed up with a stack of paper plates and biodegradable plastic cutlery. I knew they were biodegradable because Aunt Astrid exclaimed at it, telling Mrs. Park, “You know me too well!”

Astrid really did look fully recovered. She turned back to chat with Jake.

“Detective Williams joined us only ten minutes ago. Other than him, our place was packed last night,” Min said.

I watched as Jake nodded and waved goodbye at everyone. He gave Peanut Butter a rub under the chin on his way toward us.

Min continued, “Bea brought her mom and all three cats up here to comfort my mom while I was… you know…”

“Our families have always been so close,” I said, hoping he wouldn’t say how weird and unlike Bea that action was. I also hoped that if Min didn’t get a chance to say it, he wouldn’t get a chance to really think it through and get suspicious about it.

“Mom wouldn’t let me go back to the inn room where I got kidnapped.” Min gave an embarrassed shrug. “So it was a bit crowded. We still missed you, though!”

I grabbed Min’s hand. “The last three days might have been hell, and I know you don’t have good memories of this town to begin with, but I swear, it’s not usually like this. How long can you stay—so that we can catch up?”

“I can stay as long as it takes for us to get properly caught up.” Min said, “Besides, not all my memories of this town are bad.”

“Cath,” Jake said to me.

“I guess you need a statement or a testimony or something?” I said to him.

“I’ll go get my dad to put something on the grill for you,” Min said by way of excusing himself. “We’ve got burgers, hot dogs, and sausages—oh, and Mom made her pork-sausage patty mixin’s, so—”

“That last one! I want that! Two of them, please,” I called to Min as he headed for the grill.

I walked Jake to the police car down the slope, afraid of what he had to say. Aloud, I begged, “Tell me that Blake made it.”

Jake said, “He’s fine. It’s not the first time he’s survived a bullet to the heart, even. He told me so.”

I sighed with relief.

“The doctors had to keep him sedated so he wouldn’t try to work. Today! Can you believe that?”

“From Blake Samberg, I’m not surprised!” I laughed. “What’s the Wonder Falls Police Department going to do with someone like that?”

Jake answered, “Well, lately I’ve been wondering what we’d do without him. His testimony, though… his and Mr. Park’s…”

They’d both heard me admit to Reuben that I was a witch. “Reuben had me at gunpoint,” I said to Jake. “He obviously believed that this old spell book, the prize of Aunt Astrid’s collection, was real for some reason. But he had a gun on me! So I tried to play along.”

“Blake believed that the three of you reading aloud from the book was what caused the lake to light up.”

“Coincidence.” I said, “I just came from the animal shelter. Cody was telling this news crew all about what happened last night—with the glowing, I mean. Of course, Cody wasn’t at the standoff. Maybe when Blake’s recovered a little more, he’ll think more sensibly.”

Jake persisted, “Min Park said that he had a vision of this goddess in the lake.”

“Of course he would! He’d just had a near-death experience.”

“Isn’t his family Buddhist?”

I shrugged. “Last night was just confusing. By the way, when can we have that book back?”

“We have to hold it as evidence, unfortunately, until after the trial. It could be months before we can release it. It’s obviously valuable to your family, but I’ve already bent too many rules. The chief has filed it as evidence with the justice of the peace. Someone would notice that it was gone. I’m sorry.”

You don’t even have the slightest hint of how sorry you should be! If that book falls into the wrong hands…

Almost as if he’d read my mind, Jake told me, “If there were a way I could get it back to you, you know I would. It’s safer with your family.”

I looked at Jake, startled. Bea couldn’t have told him. But he’d figured something out. I told him, “It’s just an old book.”

“Really?” Jake said, in a tone of voice exactly between dismissive and challenging. Then he put the palm of his hand to his head. “Oh, would you look at that. You’ve been answering all my questions, and here I am without a notepad. We’ll talk later, once you’ve thought through what happened last night. Right?”

I nodded.

“I’m off to follow up with Nadia LaChance,” Jake said. “Reuben Connors and Dexter Edison haven’t been cooperative.”

“One goon got out alive, then?”

“Alive but behind bars. We don’t have enough to implicate the entire Order, and Reuben Connors’s alleged involvement with both fires… complicates things, especially in LaChance’s case. But don’t worry about the book.”

Jake got into his car and drove away.

Not even three of Mrs. Park’s pork-sausage patties, sandwiched in their respective English muffins, could get me to quit worrying about the book.

“Oh,” I said when Min asked me what was wrong, “it’s just that one of my aunt’s most valuable pieces of a collection was stolen.” He’d been showing me a slideshow of his trip to the south of Spain, and I think I might have confused an autopilot response to pictures of a bead shop with an autopilot response to the pictures of fountains that functioned somehow without modern pumping technology.

Aunt Astrid heard me and complained, “The police might as well have done the stealing if they don’t give it back. Months, he said! Months!”

“Luckily,” Bea added, “everyone who’s deluded enough to think it’s real is behind bars.”

Min said, “Right!” sounding as though he meant it. “For today, for right now, everyone’s safe. All’s well in wonderful Wonder Falls.”

Mr. Park said, “Show them the video of the Bali beach—the kites that were shaped like boats and look as though they’re floating in the blue sky!”

So the records of Min’s travels continued. Sunlight through the canopy of some African jungle. A performance of
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
in some park in Australia, invaded by a swarm of giant bull ants. Beautiful stray cats in the Coliseum in Rome. A few more.

When it was done, I applauded. “It’s great you got to see the whole world! Thanks so much for sharing it with us.”

“Not that great,” Min said. “You still take yourself with you, you know.”

Bea said, “But you’ve changed! I mean…”

Mr. Park finished Bea’s sentence, “You’ve grown. My boy’s a man.”

Mrs. Park disagreed. “He’ll always be my baby.”

I’d meant what I said about the rest of the world being great to see, especially through Min’s perspective. His whole slideshow made me appreciate my own hometown that much more, though.

On the walk back to Aunt Astrid’s place, Bea had a suggestion. “We should go camping.”

We took turns carrying Marshmallow, as the old cat demanded. Peanut Butter didn’t mind walking as long as he was with us. Treacle didn’t mind wandering off and disappearing entirely.

But Treacle, with his scar, had been more loyal to me than any of the pudgy strays in Rome, with their unscratched coats, would have been. We didn’t have playgrounds in Wonder Falls, but the kids could play safely in the meadows. Maybe one day I’d visit the mysterious jungles of darkest Africa or surf the magnificent and vivid tropical-blue waters of Balinese beaches, but I was in no hurry. We had enough mystery and magnificence in the waterfalls of my own little hometown.

“We haven’t gone camping in years,” Aunt Astrid said as we arrived at her place. She opened the door and went inside. “That would be lovely.”

Bea set Marshmallow down on the sofa and followed her. Marshmallow scratched her ear with a hind paw and shook her head.

“So, when should we do it?” Bea asked.

I shut the door behind us and answered, “When this is all over.”

Aunt Astrid nodded.

Bea looked from her mother to me, dismayed. “This isn’t over? How can it not be over? Do you mean when we get our book back and can make sure that it’s safe?”

“Yes. But also, I saw who attacked me,” Aunt Astrid said. “It wasn’t Reuben.”

“Reuben Connors and that one guy aren’t innocent in this whole thing,” I said, as everything began to come together in my mind. “But there’s one loose end that we have to tie up, and we can’t involve the police.” I paused. “Well, maybe Jake. I think he knows, but I think he doesn’t want to know.”

Aunt Astrid said, “I’ll put the kettle on, and Cath can tell us all about what she’s figured out.”